Happy Birthday to You (Birthday Trilogy, Book 3) (24 page)

I looked at Liesel. We were both clearly
thinking the same thing. “You trust me?” I asked.

“Of course I do.”

“I won’t have a conscience about this,” I
said. “Because this is for the sake of all humanity.”

Liesel nodded, brought her hands up to
her mouth, and closed her eyes.

“Here we go,” I said.

The officer knocked on the back window.
“I said, open up the back!
Now
!”

But I didn’t open the back. Instead I
turned on the ignition and floored the petal to the medal, going from zero to
sixty in a matter of seconds. I literally left the two cops in the dust as I
sped down the road, watching in my rearview mirror as the two cops ran back to
their car, the female one shouting into a walkie talkie, most assuredly
requesting back-up.

“Well, that couldn’t have gone any
worse,”
Liesel
said.

“Sure it could’ve,” I said. “They
could’ve killed us.”

I drove faster and faster, from
sixty to seventy
, from eighty to ninety. I topped off at
ninety-five, and I assumed going any less than that would have me face to face
with the California police force quicker than I could say, “but, please, I need
to save the world!”

“We should find the nearest side street,”
Liesel said.

“We can’t turn off too quickly. They’ll
be expecting that.”

“Do you think they called in back-up? Do
you think another cop could be coming in the other direction?”

“Let’s pray that doesn’t happen.”

Liesel slunk down in her seat. “Oh God,
Cameron.”

“What?”

She didn’t say another word. She just
pointed forward, at the large mountain up ahead. We couldn’t hear the sirens
yet. But two, possibly three, cop cars were headed our way, the bright colors
on top of their cars illuminating the gray skies. I looked in my rearview
mirror and thankfully didn’t see the other car coming up from behind yet.

“We have to hide,” I said.

“No,
duh
,”
Liesel muttered. “What the hell are we gonna do?”

When I glanced in the rearview mirror
again, this time seeing the cop car from behind gaining on me, I knew we had to
do more than simply hide.

When I spotted the rundown gas station up
ahead to the left, I got an idea.

“Leese, grab the bag with the paintball
guns.”

“What? Why?”

“Just do it. We’re running out of options
here.”

Liesel grabbed the heavy bag and brought
it to the front seat. As I pulled into the gas station, I was startled by an
odd noise from behind.

“Whhhhhhh—” The voice was low and
grumbly.

First, Liesel screamed, not exactly
subtle. I slammed on the brakes and jumped out of the car as soon as I could. I
felt icky all over, as if a dead body had transformed into a man-hungry zombie
in the back seat.

“He’s awake!” I shouted.

Liesel jumped out on the other side, the
bag of paintball guns slung over her shoulder. “I don’t believe it!”

“I thought we had more time!”

“I did, too!” Liesel shouted.

I turned to my left to see the three cop
cars approaching us. Then I looked to my right to see the other cop car
appearing over the hill. Then I looked toward the back of my car to see the Dr.
Rice fellow realizing, for the first time, what was happening.

“Oh my God, could this get any worse?”
Liesel shouted.

I pursed my lips and scratched my head
for a moment. I had an idea. “Take two of the paintball guns out of the bag.
The smaller ones.”

“What for?”

“Just do it.”

Liesel handed me the one that looked like
a pistol.

“OK,” I said. “Follow me.”

I took Liesel by the hand and we tiptoed
into the food mart adjacent to the gas station. At first I thought it might be
closed, given that it was dark inside. But I was happy, first, to see that it
was open, and second, to see that only a single person—the
cashier—was inside. He was short, sunburnt, and looked totally
disinterested in his job.

I approached him and waved the paintball
gun in his face, trying to move it fast enough so that he’d think it was a real
gun.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” the man shouted,
raising his arms up in the air. “Please don’t hurt me!”

“I won’t hurt you,” I said. “Not if I
don’t have to!”
 

“Come on,” Liesel whispered into my ear.
“We have to go.”

He opened the cash register and started
throwing twenty-dollar-bills at me.

“I don’t want your money!” I shouted. “I
want your
car
!”

“My car?” he asked, dumbfounded. “It’s a
dumpy little—”

“Now, asshole!” I screamed, shoving the
paintball gun against his chest.

“OK,” he said. “OK, OK, OK.” He tossed
his car keys at us, keeping his arms up high.

“Where is it?” I asked.

“Out back!”

“How much gas is in it?”

“I just filled it up,” the man said, his
lips quivering. I figured he was going to start crying at any second.

“You’re a good man,” I said. “I—”

Before I could finish my sentence, Dr.
Rice barged into the mini-mart, his shirt off, a scowl on his face that
suggested he wanted to eat Liesel and me whole. He ran toward me first, and I
stepped aside to let Liesel break out some more of her karate moves. She kicked
him twice in the face, then once in the balls, sending the corrupt doctor down
to the ground once again. He wasn’t knocked unconscious this time, but he
slumped over, crying in pain.

“Come on,” Liesel said, rushing toward
the back door.

“Yes, sir,” I said with a chuckle,
chasing after her.

The cashier had been right. His car was dumpy,
a crappy little brown jeep that looked about twenty years old.

At
least the
cars
aren’t growing a year older with every hour
,
I thought.
Then we’d be in serious
trouble.

Liesel and I jumped inside, and I looked
back, only once, to see the cop cars pulling into the gas station.

I turned on the ignition when Liesel
said, “Where are we gonna go?”

I took a deep breath, and looked out the
dirty windshield. “We’re going forward. That’s all we can do.”

Liesel didn’t challenge my decision as I
started driving away from the food mart, not heading back toward the road we
were on, but down a dirt road that aligned with the back of the gas station.
Liesel turned back after a minute or so to see if any of the cops were
following us. They weren’t. It looked like, before the mini mart attendant
could notify the cops that we had stolen his car, we had covered too much
ground.

“We have to find another car, Cam,”
Liesel said after the first ten minutes. “The cops are gonna be looking for
this one.”

“They’re not gonna be looking for us for
long, Leese. Everyone’s getting sick. And by tonight, nobody’s
gonna
be interested in finding two lowly criminals.
Especially not when all their mothers and fathers are dying, when
their children are growing from five to twenty-five, from one to forty-one.
We’re
gonna
be OK. We just have to lay low. Try not to
get pulled over again.”

Liesel looked at the speedometer. I was
going eighty. “You’re speeding again.”

“But I’m not over the speed limit,” I
said, annoyed. “I’m not even on a road!”

Liesel put her feet up on the dash and
brought her hands to her face again. “Dr. Rice… we don’t have him… we’re not
gonna have him…”

“You sent Hannah those pictures,” I said.
“She believes we have him. That’s all that matters.”

“But when we show up tomorrow… when she
sees he’s not with us…”

“We’re just
gonna
have to improvise,” I said. “Have faith, Leese. Maybe this will all turn out
the way we hoped.”

She didn’t respond. She just pushed her
head back against the seat and stared out the passenger side window.

It took nearly thirty minutes to find a
paved road, but when I did, I quickly found a major freeway, and we were back
on track toward our destination. I drove all day, and we pulled over for the
night in Portola, California, a small town outside of Graeagle.

Liesel fell asleep minutes after I parked
in a vacant lot.

But not me.
I stepped outside the car and called
Kimber for an update. I got her voice-mail. I left a brief but urgent message.

 
I stayed up the entire night waiting for
her to call me back.

She never did.

MOM

Shari Martin was in the mood for
something sweet, something loaded with sugar and carbs and fat and tasty
goodness. The problem was that it was after midnight, and she knew it wouldn’t
be healthy to raid the fridge. Her mom had taught her when she was a little
girl to never eat after midnight. She was always tormented growing up for
liking sweets, and she ultimately stopped craving them. She started exercising,
eating healthy, and losing weight. That’s when she met her husband Stephen.

She had cried for most of the day,
sleeping in fits, then waking back up and crying some more. She tried to be
there for Kimber most of the afternoon and evening, but her daughter still
seemed to be in shock, just lying on her bed for most of the day. Then around 4
P.M. Kimber started playing her violin, and did so for much of the evening. It
was nearly 1 A.M. now and Shari could hear no activity coming from her
daughter’s room. She hoped she was sleeping. She hoped her daughter was OK.

Shari wasn’t stupid. She knew what was
happening. She knew that it wasn’t a coincidence that everyone she knew was
rapidly aging, while her son had mysteriously left without warning and was not
returning her phone calls. There was no way in Hell that Cameron wasn’t
involved in this somehow, considering he had aged both forward and backward in
the last year. She hoped her son was getting to the bottom of this epidemic.
She hoped he would stop it for Kimber.

She sat up in her bed and petted her dog
of six years—Cinder Lou Martin. She was thankful that the dog hadn’t aged
at all, that she was still as healthy and chipper as ever. But even as she
petted the dog, she could feel the sharp pains in her own hands and wrist. She
felt tired and weak all over, like she had aged not a few years, but a few
decades. She hadn’t looked at herself in the mirror in a while—she knew
that if she did she would have a heart attack from fright.
  

Shari needed a bite to eat, and for once
in her life, she wasn’t going to stop herself from enjoying something sweet.
She tiptoed down the hallway, and before she made her way to the kitchen, she
hopped downstairs and peered into Kimber’s bedroom. Her daughter was asleep in
her bed, pillows covering her face, the covers sprawled out everywhere like
she’d been kicking and screaming throughout her soft but noticeable snoring.
She closed the door shut.

“Thank God,” Shari whispered.

She stepped into the kitchen and turned
on one of the overhead lights, seeing her dog staring up at her near the
sliding door. She let her dog roam outside for a minute as she moseyed on over
to the refrigerator, opening it to reveal a sweet treat in the front and
center.

There sat a chocolate frosted vanilla
cupcake, sitting there and staring at her, begging her to take a bite. She
reached for it and let the tips of her fingers caress the edges of the icing.
But it still didn’t feel right. She couldn’t make herself grab hold of it and
take a generous bite. She decided, as she closed the refrigerator door, that
she would wait until tomorrow.

Shari instead grabbed a handful of
vanilla wafers from the pantry and set them down on one of her slim, fancy
dining room plates. It wasn’t until she had moved the plate over to the kitchen
island that she realized her husband had given her these plates as a Christmas
gift three years ago.

She closed her eyes. “Oh Stephen…” Her
lips quivered and she could feel herself tearing up again. “Why did you always
have to be so stubborn… why couldn’t you have just dropped everything, and run
away with me…” A tear fell and she wiped her cheek. She set the plate down and
turned on the burner. “I’m sorry, honey… I’m so sorry…”

She moved the
tea
kettle
over to the burner and turned it on full blast. She picked out
her favorite tea—Sleepytime—and dropped two tea bags into her
favorite pumpkin-decorated mug.

When the
tea kettle
started singing, she pulled it off the burner and poured the steaming hot water
into the mug. She blew on the top, took a sip, and sighed, happily.

Shari set the mug on her plate with the
vanilla wafers, turned off the burner—not all the way—and made her
way back to her bedroom. She sat on the bed, with difficulty, and slowly, over
the course of a half-hour, sipped the tea, taking a break once in a while to
take a bite of the vanilla wafers. She treated it as her final meal, enjoying
every soothing sip, every scrumptious crumb, until she took her final sip and
bite, set the mug and plate down on her dresser, and lay down on her bed. She
stared up at the ceiling and tried to make her mind go blank. She tried to
forget everything. She tried just to focus on the here and now.